Paxton realised straight away he had breached the regulation and emailed the CAA that same day admitting he had flown out, Miss Shah said.
And they prosecuted him!
Just the sort of thing that encourages pilots to be open about infringements.
three days later he committed a further breach when he flew off the day before the Reading Festival was due to kick off.
He flew out again on the 24th, obviously believing he was doing nothing wrong, and they prosecuted him for that even though the "organised open-air assembly" didn't start until the 25th.
She said Paxton had originally denied breaking the rule but co-operated fully with the CAA and later admitted the breach.
Sounds like he decided to cut his losses and admit the breach instead of spending time and money fighting it.
“I do regret it tremendously, one of the reasons I am here is to apologise to the court and the CAA.”
I wonder what he was really thinking about the CAA .
So a private owner who's serious enough about his flying to do a CPL, and has done 3000 hours with no problems, gets prosecuted for one trivial infringement which he reported and one that probably wasn't an infringement anyway. AND the CAA asks for £600 for their costs on top of the fine. £600!!!
Meanwhile, the CAA does nothing about the people we all know - and they know - who regularly do illegal public transport.